Tales of the Golem; or, the Modern Epimetheus

I think I need a sunrise, I'm tired of the sunset

I've been traveling a lot lately. Last week I went to Boston for a workshop. I saw Jeanhee (first time in two years) and Geneve (first time in sixteen years).

While driving around, I heard them say on NPR that Boston drivers were no longer driving because of high gas prices and everyone was riding the T. Well, I would hate to be around for low gas prices because traffic in Boston is horrible.

Boston is well supplied with pub quizzes and I had a plan to tour several of them, but it turned out that I only made it to one, P.J. Ryan's, which is apparently located near Tufts.

The bouncer at the door carded me--and was a little skeptical of my California driver's license. The irony of this became apparent when I got inside and found the pub was packed full of tiny children! I guess I'm used to a more mature pub quiz crowd. There was one beefy white-haired guy, and then a few more people did show up who looked like they were old enough to drink. But by and large, most everybody in the pub looked like David Archuleta. The quiz was heavily attended; I only counted about eight tables in the whole place, but there were fifteen teams.

I had been planning to foist myself on some team, but I lost my nerve. I decided to just play by myself under the name Jason Castro's Not Even Trying. Playing by yourself isn't the most fun approach to pub quiz (sob) but at least I could watch the election results on the muted television. I wasn't crazy about the beers I tried. They didn't have any of my favorites on tap.

I thought it was a good quiz. Balanced mix of topics. There is a point-betting system, and some escalating opportunities to bet a lot of points, so there's potential to come from way behind late in the game. (Imagine what Final Jeopardy would be like if there were fifteen players.) That may be a bit "random" but it does keep things interesting.

I got off to a weak start but made up ground in the middle rounds. I came in second place with 197 points. Congrats to the tiny players of I Just Started Using Laser Cats Again who came first with 205 points. If only I had a teammate I could have told, "It's Bill Somebody who played for the Celtics"... no, that wouldn't have closed the gap. I feel good about it. I made fifty bucks!

Having returned from Boston, I only remembered about midnight Sunday that I was getting on a plane again to go to Phoenix about 6 am Monday. And I not only had to pack, but had to go to work to get some stuff done prior to going to the airport...

In the past couple of weeks I have received the following useful things:

• Lockheed Martin fuzzy blanket
  
• Raytheon "gunpowder" (dried jalapeno seasoning)
  
• Microcosm travel mug
  
• Microcosm ceramic coffee mug with starry sky scene that appears when you put hot liquid in the mug
  
• SpaceX USB flash drive
  
• SpaceX mints
  
• Orbital foam slingshot rockets to shoot at people
  
• Orbital tie pin (ok not that useful)
  

General Dynamics did not give us anything and did not even buy us lunch. But we do not hold that against them.

posted by Richard Mason @ Thursday, May 15, 2008